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Friday, October 12, 2018

Friday afternoon, one day before the Red Sox and Astros open the ALCS at Fenway Park, Yankees manager Aaron Boone and general manager Brian Cashman will hold their annual end-of-season press conferences at Yankee Stadium. New York won 100 games this year, but a four-game ouster in the ALDS qualifies as a disappointing season.

Among the topics Boone and Cashman will surely be asked about: Luis Severino. The staff ace finished the regular season with a 3.39 ERA (129 ERA+) in 191 1/3 innings, which is obviously very good, though it was a tale of two halves for Severino. He was great before the All-Star break and terrible thereafter.

Severino was one of the best pitchers in baseball in the first half and one of the worst pitchers in baseball in the second half. The strikeout and walk rates held steady, so that’s good, but home runs shot up and Severino was more hittable in general. Severino’s fade is a big reason why the Yankees settled for a wild card spot rather than push the BoSox for the AL East title.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Given a night to reflect on New York’s record-setting 16-1 loss to Boston in Game 3 of the AL Division Series, the Yankees’ rookie manager said he would not have let his ace take the mound for the fourth inning down 3-0 after allowing five singles and several hard-hit outs.

“Certainly in hindsight, when he doesn’t get an out, I’d like to have that back,” Boone said before Game 4 on Tuesday. “Being able to look back in hindsight, sure, go in a different way there in that spot.”

On the bright side, at least this isn’t the management that the team had twenty-five years ago, where he’d already have been fired after his loss…..

Tuesday, October 09, 2018

How quickly can Google Maps find a route from a molehill to a mountain?

When Severino failed, Darling did as well, drawing a straight line from his pregame prep to his poor outing, declaring as fact that Severino warmed up late and left early.

“That was a cute line,” Darling said in our interview. “You are going into break. You are trying to find something interesting to say. That’s a going-to-break line. But I understand what you are saying.”

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

His slider is one part of the problem. I’ve watched a few of his starts. What I noticed is his fastball location is off. He’s catching too much of the middle of the plate. To verify I looked at his fastball heatmaps on Baseball Savant. Here’s what I found:

Edit: Missed the labels somehow. On the left is Severino’s fastball before July 2nd; on the right is his fastball after July 2nd.

A slider, which isn’t breaking as much, mixed with a straight fastball, which is finding too much of the plate, is a bad combination.